Man..lately, I've been feeling/playing like absolute shit. Honestly, I can't play ANYTHING..I don't mean shred (don't worry, this is not another one of my 'ZOMG HELP ME WIZ ZEEE SHREDZ' threads) I mean my playing as a whole. I can't even ENVISION myself playing anything good..and that's like half the battle of actually playing guitar. Picking up the guitar and playing/practicing is almost a chore now

Whether it's laughable or irrational, this is the path that ALL great men walk!
If there's a wall in our way, we'll destroy it!
If there's no road, we'll pave it with our own hands!
The magma in our hearts is blazing like flames!
Who the hell do you think we are?

Take a break. Playing guitar, like any art, is about expression. If you're having a hard time with it right now, put it down and find something else to do for a while. Personally, I haven't played much at all in the past month, because I've been going through a lot off stuff with some friends of mine...Teenage drama tends to keep a person busy.

But yeah, try to pick it back up in a little while, and see what happens after you've given yourself time to refresh your thoughts.

You've got your head down
You've got your eyes closed
You look so pitiful now

Learn something easy. At some point, you're going to have to learn to play by ear - if you're sitting with your guitar on your lap staring at a speaker while a Paul Gilbert solo rips out of it, you're demanding a lot. Petrucci and Gilbert and all started out by learning Santana and Rolling Stones songs because that's all they could handle when they were starting... the visualization of playing something "good" does involve a number of intermediate steps, as frustrating as that is.

Right now there are 9 year olds out there learning Stones songs so that they can learn Petrucci licks when they're 14. I have some students who go all dramatic sometimes, I just tell 'em maybe they should get a spatula and start practicing flipping burgers instead... I sure don't hold with the idea that you'll become a better musician by not playing. Somebody out there is practicing 12 hours today, and tomorrow, and the day after - who's going to be working in ten years?

The single most important thing is to set concrete goals because that defines the steps you take to work towards them.

The goals can change over time. After he watched his best friends Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman die, Eric Clapton made a very conscious choice to stop chasing the flash guitar mantle and become a singer/songwriter - and that's fine.... all of the best guitarists I admire write most of their own stuff, so write an instrumental, make it harder that you can actually play... then make yourself play it.

"I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men." - Eric Clapton